June 2007

This performance is made possible with the collaboration of University of Pennsylvania's Department of Music.

Friday, June 15, 2007 - 8:00pm

Lotte Anker Trio

Lotte Anker, saxophones

Craig Taborn, keyboards

Gerald Cleaver, drums

Lotte Anker was born 1958 in Copenhagen. She has studied with Joe Henderson, David Liebman, John Tchicai, David Murray, and Bob Brookmeyer. She has been a member of various Danish/Scandinavian groups including Marilyn Mazurs' Primi Band as well as New Music Orchestra, Pierre Dorges' SubwayMusic, Barry Guy +Av-Art Orchestra, and ensembles led by Peter Brotzmann, Miya Masaoka, Thomas Lehn, Per Jørgensen, Michael Formanek, Tim Berne, Marc Ducret, Dylan van der Schyff, Paal Nilssen-Love, Herb Robertson, Arve Henriksen, Anders Jormin and Andrew Cyrille.

As a composer and saxophonist she has worked with both theatre and dance-theatre: "Kaspar Hauser" with Jorge Holguin Dancetheatre, "Transient Minds" with Ricketts Dance Co., and "Roberto Zucco" at The Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, "Up against the Wall" w. various dancers/performers and Copenhagen Art Ensemble at The Other Opera. In 1988 she formed the Lotte Anker/Mette Petersen Quartet. And, in 1992 the quartet transformed into a quintet with Norwegian trumpeter Nils-Petter Molvær. She also is a member of the free improvising trio with Hasse Poulsen and Peter Friis-Nielsen, and has been co-leader of the 12-piece orchestra Copenhagen Art Ensemble, which has performed the music of Tim Berne, Django Bates, John Tchicai, The Zapolski Quartet, and Mats Gustafsson.

Jazz pianist and organist Craig Taborn began working professionally in the 1990s in a variety of musical contexts, ranging from more straight-ahead jazz to more outside music, with young jazz musicians, seasoned veterans, and even techno artists. In his hometown of Minneapolis, Taborn studied piano, composition, and music theory with area university professors before going away to college. Before he graduated from college, Taborn had already performed on three recordings as a member of the James Carter Quartet. After graduating with a liberal arts degree from the University of Michigan in 1995, DIW released Taborn's first date as a leader, The Craig Taborn Trio. He then moved to N.Y.C., and by the close of the 1990s, he performed on two more Carter releases, Roscoe Mitchell's 1999 ECM release Nine to Get Ready, Detroiter Carl Craig's techno-jazz project Innerzone Orchestra, and on Hugh Ragin's Afternoon in Harlem. Since the beginning of 2000, Taborn was active performing in Tim Berne's Big Satan and Science Friction, among many other ensembles including those of Susie Ibarra, Chris Potter, Dave Douglas and members of The Bad Plus.

Gerald Cleaver is known as a super attentive drummer with a beautiful sound and hypnotic playing. He has played with a long list of musicians both from the avant-garde to the more mainstream including Henry Threadgill, Reggie Workman, Mark Helias, Ellery Eskelin, Charles Gayle, Miroslav Vitous, William Parker, Tony Malaby and is also a member of Roscoe Mitchell's Note Factory.

Dave Burrell-Noah Howard Duo

Dave Burrell, piano

Noah Howard, alto saxophone

One of free jazz's more enigmatic figures, alto saxophonist Noah Howard was documented so infrequently on record and spent so much time living in Europe that the course of his career and development as a musician remain difficult to trace, despite a late-1990s renewal of interest in his music. Howard was born in New Orleans in 1943 and began playing music in church as a child. He started out on trumpet (the instrument he played in the military during the early 1960s) but subsequently switched to alto, and got in on the ground floor of the early free jazz movement. Most influenced by Albert Ayler, Howard made his debut as a leader for the groundbreaking ESP label, recording a pair of dates in 1966 (Noah Howard Quartet and At Judson Hall). Dissatisfied with the reception accorded his music -- and the avant-garde movement in general -- in America, Howard relocated to Europe, where he initially lived in France. He played with Frank Wright in 1969, and in 1971, he recorded with Misha Mengelberg and Han Bennink (among others) on Patterns, which was issued on his own AltSax label. Howard recorded a bit for FMP in the mid-1970s, and in 1979 also did a track for France's Mercury division, "Message to South Africa," that went unissued due to its militancy. Howard flirted with jazz-funk sometime in the 1980s and early 1990s, a phase that went largely undocumented. He returned to free jazz in the late 1990s and began recording for labels other than AltSax, including CIMP (1997's Expatriate Kin), Cadence (1999's Between Two Eternities), Ayler (Live at the Unity Temple), and Boxholder (2001's Red Star). Thanks to the relative increase in visibility, Howard began to get more of his due as an early avant-garde innovator.

Ars Nova Workshop is a Philadelphia nonprofit jazz and experimental music presenting organization. ANW informs, inspires, and challenges listeners to elevate the role of jazz, improvisation, and experimental music in contemporary culture. ANW events provide a forum for discourse, emergent trends in contemporary music, and unique forms of cultural exchange, while nurturing a diverse community for innovative music.